The Sanctuary

by Gustavo Eduardo Abrevaya, Andrea G. Labinger (Translator)

Treading the line between crime thriller, detective story, and horror novel, The Sanctuary is a chilling portrayal of an upside down world, where evil is the norm and spaces once considered safe havens hold unimaginable terror.

When their car breaks down outside of the small Argentinian village of Los Huemules, indie filmmaker Álvaro and his wife, muse, and lead actress Alicia consider it a minor inconvenience. Seeking shelter in the town’s lone motel, they settle in for a night of decadent fun — but after Alicia disappears without a trace the following morning, Álvaro embarks on an increasingly desperate quest to find her. Armed only with a video camera and with a growing sense of dread, Álvaro begins to gradually uncover the town’s many dark secrets, each revelation more horrific than the last.

Winner of the prestigious José Boris Spivacow Award, The Sanctuary marks the first English language translation of renowned Argentine writer Gustavo Eduardo Abrevaya.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Crime, Suspense

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Stitching Ghost · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book wasn't long, but it felt long.

A lot of the situations our main character, Álvaro, finds himself in are quite repetitive which while great to convey the crazy making nature of his situation made for a read that felt longer than it really was.

It was a very bleak and quite brutal story where disabled children are victimized heavily and no one is "good", with a touch of the bizarre. It's Argentinean literature, and it has that particular vibe (cold, off-putting, raw, endings that make you go "wait") I find common in Argentinean horror, you either like it or you don't, I'm growing quite fond of it.

[Justine · Rating 2 out of 5]

So unfortunate, but I did not care for this at all. The writing has a surrealist edge that is just not my thing. It’s hard to judge writing style when it’s a book in translation, but whatever the reason, it did not resonate with me.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5
full post is here:
https://www.oddlyweirdfiction.com/202...

As I am never shy about saying, I love fiction in translation and so when something new comes along, I take notice. This book, The Sanctuary by Argentinian author Gustavo Eduardo Abrevaya, is the latest to have caught my attention. I bought it for October reading based on the blurb that promises a mix of "crime thriller, detective story and horror novel," but what I actually got with this novel was completely unexpected. In a good way.

Abrevaya skillfully blends tropes from crime fiction and horror in this story, and the sinister atmosphere grows incrementally throughout the novel, as does the tension surrounding both the case of a missing woman and the revelation of a small town's secrets. The opening scene seemed all too familiar, reminding me of the plot of any number of horror movies or books featuring the same elements, but it didn't take too long to realize that The Sanctuary moved well beyond the standard setup into different territory altogether.

The Sanctuary is not for the faint of heart, it is absolutely gutwrenching at times, and it can be pretty out there as well. However, it is intelligent horror fiction written with a clear vision and clear purpose, it is more than relevant to our own times, and it is a novel that continues to stick in my mind and under my skin. I started this book one night at bedtime and absolutely could not put it down for one minute until I had finished every page. Very, VERY highly and seriously recommended.

[Alix · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book begins with our two main characters finding themselves on the side of a deserted road with a broken car. With little options they walk to the only nearby town where they stay the night at a hotel. But this small town is not what it seems and in the morning Álvaro’s wife is gone without a trace. We then follow Álvaro as he investigates what happened to his wife. Along the way he meets an eccentric cast of characters-a morbidly obese and cruel mayor, a corrupt police captain, a honest lawyer who possibly has a drug addiction, and a paralyzed nun who runs a school for children with intellectual disabilities and physical deformities. All of these characters added to the setting and I felt as if I was alongside Àlvaro. The town felt so vivid and real to me.

But there’s something sinister and quite horrific going on in this town. Something you wouldn’t expect to happen in modern times.

This is quite the wordy book so I don’t think it will be for everyone. You’ll often get pages without paragraph breaks. It’s also more lit fiction than horror but there’s definitely some gut-turning aspects to it. Since Àlvaro is a director there’s also quite a few movies referenced in the text. The ending was filled with action and I had no idea which way it was gonna go. Now, time for me to rewatch Paris, Texas, which Àlvaro states is the ultimate road trip movie.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great potential that missed paying off. Casually cruel to/about his wife, Álvaro discovers a mean little town that's even crueler than him. His wife disappears, he fucks up the town, and then leaves.

It seemed like set pieces and philosophy that was burdened by having to throw a plot around it. It's not creepy enough to be horror, not interesting enough to be noir, nor grounded enough to be literary fiction. It's an odd no-man's-land of bleak and uninteresting.

[Sam Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

HOLY FLIPPIN FLIP. I am just speechless. I am beyond myself and so thankful to Schaffner Press, Gustavo Eduardo Abrevaya, Andrea. G. Labinger, and Edelweiss for granting me physical and digital access to this translated horror that will have you picking your jaw up off the ground, seeking answers. The Sanctuary hits shelves on October 3, 2023, and I HIGHLY recommend y'all picking up this short, but horribly grotesque tale about the horrors of breaking down in a lawless small town.

An indie filmmaker, Álvaro and his wife Alicia find their car has broken down right outside the small Argentinian village, Los Huemules and they're in need of lodgings until they can repair their vehicle. Pointed into town, they take up residence at The Seagull Inn for the night, but all hell breaks loose when Álvaro wakes the next morning to find his wife is missing. After frantically asking around with the mechanic, police, church, and local townspeople, he's basically pulling out his hair at this sudden disappearance.

With each passing hour, he learns more and more that Los Huemules is definitely not the type of place you'll want to wander around in, especially at night, for the long-standing Dupree family hosts a ritual that mimics the witch hunt of the early 1700s but this time directed at the disabled and deformed children residing in the town's orphanage. Plucking them from the care of the nuns and brutally (or their eyes, handing them over to God) murdering them.

Álvaro can figure that his wife likely got caught in the crossfire after taking a smoke break that first evening, and seeing as how every member of the town is drinking the same delusional kool-aid distributed by Father Dupree, the Mayor and the police chief, he realizes he needs to do better by his wife and the thousands of slain children to get this story the media before he too faces his demise.

I couldn't put this one down and will probably need three or four more days to process this conclusion.

[Angyl · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars rounded up.

The Sanctuary follows a couple on a road trip who find their car broken down on a long stretch of desert highway. They seek refuge at a small town nearby but after spending the night in a motel, Alvaro wakes to find his wife missing. The story follows Alvaro's journey to locate her and the desperation that follows after he begins to learn about the dark and sinister history of the town.

There were a lot of elements that I really enjoyed throughout the story. It got dark and messed up at times but I just wish it leaned a bit more heavily into those aspects. The whole time I was waiting for something big/crazy/shocking to come, but it just never does..

Though I did not mind the writing, it is important to note that this is a very dense & wordy book, and therefore, will not be for everyone. There are monologues that go on for pages without breaks for paragraphs. There is excessively detailed descriptions of seemingly non-important things throughout.

Overall, I would recommend this to horror fans who don't mind a dense book, and those who like horror with elements of crime solving, hopelessness, and dark & sinister secrets.

[Andy Weston · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of the novel may be nothing new, a car breakdown in the desert miles from anywhere expect a small town whose inhabitants are up to no good.. but, Abrevaya does a solid job in relating the tale in such a gripping way that it oozes cosmic horror.

Álvaro, a filmmaker, and his wife, Alicia, are the unlucky breakdown couple, and they walk to the small town called Los Huemules, and end up staying at a cheap hotel while the repair takes place. But the following morning, Alicia is gone. Álvaro’s search leads him to the mayor, also the “eviscerator” who runs the morgue, and to the authorities and a nun who oversees an orphanage for children with disabilities. He soon realises this is no ordinary town.

The mayor and the priest run the town, and they have unorthodox ideas about purity which involve demons. There is also something very sinister going on that involves the dogs that used to hunt deer, and the occasional kidnapping of the disabled children from the orphanage. As Álvaro seeks answers, the town turns against him, and pretty soon the story is one of religious zealotry and evil.

[Olivia Fitzsimmons · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 and a half stars really, but the ending bothered me a bit. First off, I had to read it twice to even try to understand what had occurred. He found Alicia almost dead, and in a last attempt to survive the wolves sacrificed her nearly dead body and drove off with Patricio? If that's the case I think its a cop out of an ending, and still leaves a lot unanswered. Did she simply run away after the gunshots? Did the men find her, torture her and then dump her there? As for the wolf pack, I honestly couldn't tell if there was a monstrous creature there or if he just got very descriptive with the head of the pack. In general I liked it, I thought it was suspenseful rather than scary, but interesting. I do agree with other reviews though, that it appears as a horror novel and ends up focusing much too long on things such as religion and the cruelty of humanity. I just wished it picked up a little more and there was some kind of resolution at the end instead of whatever that was.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

A political allegory, also a horror novel and a thriller and maybe an attack on the right-wing Catholic underpinnings of the dictatorship. Hipster director and his girlfriend's car breaks down in an extremely backwatery Argentine backwater (shades of every 70s horror movie featuring terrifying hicks), and then she disappears overnight. Let's just say that things get weird, in all directions--there's the mayor, who evokes Jabba the Hutt, medieval religious zealotry, weirdly threatening and resentful officials, some nuns who may or may not be the town's moral conscience, and a gradually constricting sense of grinding menace as the whole town more and more openly threatens poor Álvaro. It has whiffs of Kafka and those vaguely threatening novels Magnus Mills wrote, where some obscure danger hovers immanently in the air. The dedication to the Dirty War's disappeared suggests reading the novel as an indictment of the zealous puritanism and racism, the depravity clothing itself as rectitude, that powered that war, but it also works as a creepy 70s-ish admonition not to stray from the city.

[Will · Rating 2 out of 5]

*2.25

Alvaro and his wife Alicia are traveling from Buenos Aries to a lake in the south. Being an indie filmmaker, with Alicia as his muse, we see them in the makings of a movie when their car breaks down in the desert and they're guided to a nearby town. In the middle of the night Alicia goes missing, and no one seems to agree about where she is or was or who saw her. As he searches for his wife, we find out about the dark underbelly of the town.

Now, I should say that this is a translated work, originally published in 2003 in Spanish and just recently getting an English translation. It's hard to know what issues I have with the writing are due to translation or due to the original prose, but I found it to be far too descriptive about all of the wrong things and not descriptive enough about the right things. And so much of the novel is so passive, at least with regards to our main character's investigation of what happened to his wife. And that bothered me. It felt like he wasn't even really trying all that hard to find her. I mean, we're told it's a small town, and he's not gonna go searching up and down to find her?? And instead we're just gonna talk to random people and do what they say?? I found that annoying.

Likewise there were some icky objectification going on, but it also felt self-aware and so I'm gonna just chalk that up to cultural/time differences.

However, I didn't really care for the direction the novel went after the halfway point. And I thought by the end of the novel I was barely keeping up with plot points and what was going on and why were doing the things we were doing.

But upon some looking into what the novel is even trying to say, I fell down a rabbit hole of Argentina's Dirty Wars, and then things began to fall into place of how this novel fits into Argentina's cultural zeitgeist. And while I'm obviously just an ignorant American, I think this novel would have MASSIVELY benefited from an introduction explaining that bit of Argentina's history and the commentary this book is making about that brutal violence against women and children and anyone deemed unrighteous.

I think it's the type of book you need to know what it's trying to say before you get into it, otherwise I think it just leaves way too much in the dark.

That being said, maybe this will work for other people but I didn't really have a good time in the second half and the only reason I didn't dnf was I was hoping for a satisfying resolution or a massively interesting plot reveal. And I also powered through because this is a pretty short book, falling just under 200 pages. Unfortunately, this just wasn't a win for me.

[Tori]

DNF @ 20%

An indie filmmaker is traveling with his wife when their car breaks down and they have to stop in an uninviting small town; when he wakes up in the morning, she is gone, and everyone insists that everything is fine. The novel was originally written in Spanish; this is the 2023 translation into English.

I really wanted to like this one, and a lot of the reviews I have read have reassured me that it's spooky and claustrophobic and fucked up in a way that I'd enjoy. But I was put off by the primary character, who is a deeply misogynistic man and an awful husband. He compares himself enviously to Woody Allen; he chooses to film his wife naked in the shower without her knowledge, though he knows it would upset her; his gaze as a filmographer, point-of-view character, and person veers wildly between "horny" and "lecherous" in a way that I could not warm up to, although believe me I tried.

I started this review, stopped to read other people's reviews, endeavored to give it another shot, and was hit with several paragraphs of deeply unpleasant descriptions of a fat character. I can imagine gritting my teeth and continuing, and I even think there would be some value in it. But, well, one of my holds just came in.

[Mitchell Stern · Rating 2 out of 5]

Definitely a letdown.

[Jonathon McKenney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Promising start but the book never came together for me, and the end was a flop

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think there could be a good story in here somewhere, but it's just not well executed. I really struggled with this one. At first, I thought it was a bad translation, but the further I got along, the more I realized there are simply too many issues with the writing itself to lay all the blame on the translator. Blame is to be shared by all in this one.

The characters all felt wooden. The text did more telling than showing. The stakes are not high enough to care about throughout the first half of the book or so, and then everything just becomes predictable. There is absolutely no reason for entire pages to be solid blocks of text, especially one after another. The style change with numbering sections is unnecessary and a bit confusing at first.The implication that mentally disabled children are a burden and used as a driving lever in that way is troubling and problematic (the horror is what is being done to them, not that they exist, Mr. Abrevaya!). And the amount of overall info dumping over nuance is staggering.

I only got through this book in its entirety because of its relative brevity.

On a positive note, I will say, it feels like I'm missing some context in terms of the motivation behind creating this text. The story's concepts do have potential. However, again, its execution is just abysmal.

This is a good example of what a horror book should not be and what a popular fiction author should not do.

[Karan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure what I think of this book. It was a good read, and wow, different from anything else I've read. The writing was OK, but I think I don't understand what the writer was telling me. I'll be pondering this for a bit while I figure it out.
The story is that Alvaro is a director and he and his wife are on their way to a cabin where he can work on his film. Their car breaks down in the desert and they barely manage to find a hidden town and rent a room in a short stay hotel. In the morning, no wife. Alvaro sets out into the strangest town in the history of strange towns to find her and the rest is for you to read for yourself.

[Chris Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A trippy and absurdist horror-noir, and a solid entry in the small-town-with-dark-secrets genre. Most reminded me of The Vanishing. Not everything clicked here, and if this was any longer it would've teetered into tedium. More than a couple monologues (while intermittently amusing and illuminating) overstay their welcome. Still this was pretty enjoyable.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hm. I think this would've been a better film than it was a book. But I also think that the author would agree. So.

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is fast paced and rather short. I finished it in one sitting. It is dark!!

[MiniMicroPup (X Liscombe) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Confusing, flawed, but strangely mesmerizing? The best way I can describe this is the literary equivalent of coming across a weird, low-budget ‘70s horror movie …and somehow you’re hooked and end up watching the whole thing. It was more about the mood and big picture so if you can push through the rough patches and just go with the flow, you might like it too.

Energy: Precarious. Murky. Stubborn.

🐺 Growls: The MC makes baffling decisions, ignores common sense, gets distracted from his urgent mission, trusts the shadiest people, advertises when he had incriminating evidence…his stubbornness is addressed later but he kept knocking me out of the plot.

🐕 Howls: The writing is strange, sometimes clunky. Maybe down to the translation, but the shifts between reality and the main character’s screenplay-style imagination were jarring. The dialogue could be robotic and at times I had no idea who was speaking or where we were.

🐩 Tail Wags: The plot’s undercurrent of evil. The unsettling small town vibe. The unique and vividly drawn cast of characters. Grim, dreamlike vibe. I don’t think I full understood some of the metaphors, but they stuck with me. The unsettling imagery.

Scene: 🇦🇷 Los Huemules, Argentina
Perspective: An indie filmmaker, travelling with their aspiring actress spouse when their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, so they seek out the nearest town for somewhere to stay.
Timeline: Linear. Late 1990s. 🏜️ Desert heat (and cold).
Narrative: Thrown in to the scene. Watching from afar & tagging along (third person limited).
Fuel: Missing wife, weird town, quirky and eccentric characters. Who to trust. What is really going on in the town and why. Is our MC safe and if not, will he find his wife and escape?
Cred: Speculative plausible

Mood Reading Match-Up:
Chevy coupe. Red pants. Landfill. Rumbling engines. Gun shots. VHS tape. Dogs circling.
• Obscure, cheesy, unsettling, vivid writing style
• Flawed, nasty, questionable, villainous characters
• Missing wife clue trails and quest
• Surreal, grimdark fever dreams
• Small town corruption and curfews
• Social and religious horror, good vs evil
• Wrong place, wrong time
• Dark histories and secret bloodlines
• Sexy getaway gone wrong
• Creepiness, cruelty, greed, and societal decay
• Imperfect heroes

Content Heads-Up: Ableism (against special needs child, Downs Syndrome, microcephaly). Alcohol (bars). Animal attacked (dogs). Animal death (hunting dogs). Child abuse, cruelty, torture. Corruption (political, religious). Death, corpse (morgue). Drug abuse, addiction (morphine). Genocide/genetic cleansing. Gun violence. Incest, inbreeding (discussion). Loss of spouse. Misogyny (sex shaming). Nicotine (cigarettes, cigar). Pornography (recall). Racism, racial slurs, bigotry (character opinions, beliefs). Rape (suspected, mentions). Sexism. Toxic masculinity. Trafficking (children, drugs, weapons). Violence, physical attacks. Voyeurism. Xenophobia.

Rep: Argentinian. Cis. Hetero. Pale and dark skin tones. Pneumatic tube wheelchair user.

📚 Format: Kobo Plus

My musings 💖 powered by puppy snuggles 🐶

[Tabaco y Tinta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una novela breve enteramente disfrutable. La historia es sumamente rica en cuanto a lo sensorial y tiene ese tinte noventoso que transporta a los lectoras y las lectoras a una época alejada de las facilidades tecnológicas de hoy en día. La verdadera riqueza de la historia yace en lo inhóspito de su escenario, tan llamativo como misterioso.
Es una obra para todo el mundo, pero con un aire netamente argento que la hace tanto más disfrutable para quienes tienen la experiencia de recorrer las rutas y los rincones más recónditos de la Argentina. La tensión se mantiene constante, los personajes tienen varias capas de profundidad y el lector se ve obligado a tomar parte de los personamientos personales del personaje principal.
Aunque puede resultar tediosa por la intención de plasmar una poesía en prosa en fragmentos de algunos capítulos (sumado a los nombres en latín que la hacen apenas un tanto snob), la historia es para recomendar, compartir y debatir.
Una lectura ligera ideal para amantes del género.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a day to figure out how to word this mostly because I'm still astounded by what I read.
In one way, it's a story of a couple stranded off the side of an unknown town thanks to their car breaking down and the wife goes missing the next day and it's the MC's journey to find her.

In another way it's a journey into this unknown and weird town full of secrets, murder, dirty deeds, and corruption.

It took me a while to understand what I was reading as within the story, the MC has long and wordy monologues throughout the book, sometimes going on for pages, about the pseudo movie he's working on, different film shots and angles, and other details passages that do nothing for the story.

Odd, dense, and yet when the story picks up, there's elements of horror, crime, and suspense mixed in with trauma and ritual.

[Christie Bane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a creepy book — a nightmare in story form. A filmmaker and his wife are on a routine road trip when they break down in the middle of nowhere, but it turns out they are actually close to the weirdest town that ever existed. It looks sort of normal at first, but gradually you realize nothing is right in this town. The man wakes up after they spend the night in a hotel, and finds his wife missing. Over the next couple of days, what at first seemed a minor inconvenience turns into a life-changing disaster, at nightmare speed where you tell yourself that things are fine for a while and then suddenly they are soooooo not fine. This book is not for everyone for sure, but I loved it.

[hartfullofbooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

A surrealist horror-crime novel centered around a film maker and his wife who stumble upon the wrong town at the wrong time. This is a hard one to rate because it really is just so weird, the characters are strange and the writing is surrealist to the point it was hard for me to get into.

Not to mention the main character Alvaro is a sexist and talks about his wife like a trophy piece the entire time….

I can see what the point was and what the author was going for but this fell flat for me.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short and could have been shorter. Feels like it was written as a long form screenplay? Sometimes more concerned with conjuring a visual than anything else. Which is fine but feels like the fairly ripe premise is wasted.

The terror of being in a strange place not knowing where your partner is while being lied to by everyone just doesn't come through. Homeboys taking naps and shit.

[Jennifer Leonard · Rating 2 out of 5]

This story was all over the place, often doubling back on the same territory with no new pickups. The plot itself is a terrifying premise of the worst that people can be, but I wouldn’t categorize that as horror. 2.5 stars.

[I Read Slow · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gotta be honest.... I have no idea what this was supposed to be, lol. It did keep me wanting to read it, but even 2 weeks later, I still don't really understand it, and aim not really sure I understood the ending. Kinda just left me with more questions...

[Jennifer Perez · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 it had a lot of good setup that went nowhere and I felt like the ending left something to be desired. It would be better as a movie as well, but even then it's lacking something.
Not bad, just not great either, very middle of the road.

[John Horn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clever and fast-moving thriller set in a strange South American town where a filmmaker's girlfriend goes missing. Imagine a mashup of "Lord of the Flies" and "The Exorcist" with a little bit of "The Hunt."

[Maddy Brickey · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really did want to like this, but seriously has the author or translator ever heard of something called paragraph breaks?????? Crumbs of good story potential here and there, but it was lost in the surrealist writing and clunky prose.